Hello former students!
This is seriously so strange! First, this is the first time I have written a class recap blog days after the actual class. It was just insanely busy there for everyone at the end of the week. Secondly, I have no idea who is actually going to read this, considering there is no real reason to unless you are interested about what happened in class or what I am up to. Anyway, here goes! Please let me know (as always) if you have any questions or comments!
Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? How did the concept of nonviolence develop and become implemented?
Soundtrack: What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong. Lyrics here. As I said in class, this is one of my favorite songs ever, and the one that I picked to best describe myself when I was a sophomore in high school. A great one to end out the year of Global Studies!
AGENDA 6/11/09:
News Brief
What We Want to Be
Class Reflections
Travel and Thrive
Homework: Have a wonderful summer! Read the new blog, if you like! Stay in touch!
After going over all of the stuff written on the board, I gave everyone my personal e-mail address (because I lost my Beaverton one at midnight last night), which is: LukeFritz@aol.com.
I am very serious when I say that I want you to stay in touch! Send me updates on what is going on! Need me to proof read a paper? Send it my way! Have a question about something going on around the world? E-mail me!
I also pointed out that I have started a new class blog for all of my Global Studies students to keep in touch with each other, which can be found here: http://westviewgsalum.blogspot.com/. I have already e-mailed everyone I could find addresses from to become authors on there - please let me know if you did not get one and want an invite! It looks like Haze posted a comment DURING CLASS, to start us off, haha. I am guessing that this new blog will only be as good as you help make it. If I see that nobody is actually reading it, I am sure that it will die off soon. I really do not want that to happen! Please favorite it and come back every so often to check in - if you have something especially cool to post, let me know, and I can give you a screenname to post on the blog with, anytime you want!
News Brief: Again, this is a little strange, because a lot of this happened a few days ago, but here goes.
Sam was going to mention for his news brief (before someone else mentioned it first) the shooting on Wednesday at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington D.C. Here is a recap of what happened: CNN.com - Guard killed during shooting at Holocaust museum. I was also blown away to hear how truly hateful this 88 year old man is. Hopefully this will show you one of the reasons why the United States supports Israel so much - for whatever reason, there is a LOT of hatred for Jewish people (which is called being an Anti-Semite) out there in the world. Here is a great article about responding to hate and intolerance in this case: WashingtonPost.com - Stepping Up to Defy Intolerance. A great quote, that reminds me of so many things we have talked about in class this year:
For many visitors, the reopening yesterday was an opportunity to make a statement of defiance against intolerance.
"We can't let hatred win," said William Dailey, a teacher at Jefferson Junior High School in Toledo who was chaperoning a school trip.
Toward the head of the line was Tammi Miller, 17, visiting Washington with her family from South Florida. Miller was in the museum Wednesday and was evacuated by way of a fire escape when the shooting began.
"It's important to come back, because if you don't, they win," she said. "It's a form of terrorism."
Really interesting and tragic at the same time. It is a sometimes brutal world out there!
This story was also mentioned in class (a topic that we had talked about a lot in the last couple of months): Yahoo! News - WHO: Swine flu pandemic has begun, 1st in 41 years. As it mentions in the article, the term pandemic basically means an epidemic all over the world - in this case, it is still something to be concerned about, though it does not seem even as close to as deadly as originally feared.
Thank you for your interest and attention in the news brief section all year! I love how the class brought such interesting things in to talk about and keep me on my toes!
What We Want to Be: As I pointed out, I got very little sleep last night because of grading your papers, so I did not get to do anything fancy with your "be the change" assignment that I had you do last class - as in a PowerPoint or something. However, I think it was almost as good just to be able to read them aloud and have you write about what your fellow classmates said. Here is a picture of what we came up with as far as noticing what everyone said:
I know this may have been a little boring, but I really thought it was cool to see what everyone said. Stay true to your hopes and dreams! You all are seriously amazing!
Class Reflections: See, it would have been nice to have had time for this earlier in the week so that I could talk to you about what your class wrote, but here goes. I selected a few comments to post that I especially liked (obviously, there were great comments about how to get better, too):
"That you are very nice and always come with a big smile on your face - I get happy too!"
"I have no advice, but as a comment, I liked the effort you put into our classes. No other teachers do that." - As an aside here, I am confident that your other teachers work just as hard if not harder than I do - you probably just noticed it more because I was new to it all.
"I will remember this class by all the inspiring stuff we learned."
"Thanks a lot Mr. Fritz, for teaching me Global Studies, not just textbook worksheets, but videos and researching that helped me a lot."
Thank you for all the valuable information and thoughts!
Travel and Thrive: The "Travel" section of this part of the lesson was geared around watching about a 10 minute clip from near the end of movie Elizabethtown (2005). The rest of the movie is pretty good too, but the particular sequence that I showed you I just LOVE! It is all about just exploring the country and talking to others and making connections (even with the character's dead father). I made this relate to class because Orlando Bloom visits the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to spread some ashes. Really one of my favorite sequences (I love the music too) of traveling that I know of. My other favorite movie about traveling is Lost in Translation (2003) which is downright fantastic (however, please wait until you are 18 for that one please)! In fact, it is my eighth favorite movie of all time (ask me sometime if you want to know the top 10). :-)
The "Thrive" part of this was watching one of the most inspirational speeches that I have ever seen:
This was former North Carolina State basketball coach (and National Championship winner) Jimmy Valvano, who at the time was dying of cancer. A few months after this speech, he passed away, but wow, what a legacy to leave behind! You laugh, you think, and you cry, that is a heck of a day. Yes it is!
Anyway, after this clip, we had a short discussion about where people were traveling to this summer, if they were. Many of you were going to really amazing places! Please, please take notice of how amazing the world is around you, where ever you go! Take pictures, breathe it in! One of my favorite things to do when I am traveling is to sit down, close my eyes, and simply just listen. That would have been the activity we would have done outside, by the way - with some creative writing attached to it. Soak in life!
One final class related note: please RECYCLE your papers that you know you will not need in the future. I would feel terrible if we you spent an entire year in Global Studies and then threw your paper into the trash, to make even bigger piles of garbage around our planet.
That should just about do it, everyone! Make sure to keep checking in and getting on the alumni blog, which I have some big plans for! Seriously, I will be so disappointed if you do not! Have a fantastic few months off, and let me know what you are up to! Also, barring me being on another continent or something, I will definitely be coming back to see everyone graduate in three years (though obviously, I want to come back tons of times before that too). Just know that you have that to look forward to. I will never ever forget everyone in this class. Until the next time our paths cross, this is Luke, signing off. :-)
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